With outlandish lawsuits, a botched IPO, and a detailed social record of historic world events, 2012 will be remembered as a year of extreme highs and lows in social media. Here are the top 10 social stories that defined the year.

Forty-one million dollars in funding should be a blessing. For troubled Silicon Valley startup Color, which launched with a bang a year-and-a-half ago, the substantial investment seems to have been more of curse.

The first fruits of a multi-year deal with Verizon are starting to pay off for live video-broadcasting startup Color. Thanks to Verizon’s match-making skills, sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live will be using Color to broadcast unscripted, backstage footage to show fans.

Color me crazy, but serial entrepreneur and quixotic Silicon Valley character Bill Nguyen could be on to something big. A partnership announced today between his flagging startup Color and prominent wireless carrier Verizon is, at the very least, no small feat.

In the past week, two high-profile mobile apps were effectively shut down and acquired — Hipster by Aol and Oink by Google. Both had big PR buildups, rave reviews from the tech press, and strong usage from the digerati.

Remember Color? Back in March, the mobile startup caused a stir when it raised $41 million — an awfully big funding for a mobile app. Since then, little has emerged from the company beyond a handwritten note on the company’s Palo Alto headquarters.

Not that this comes as any surprise, but it appears that Facebook is working on a photo sharing iPhone app of its own, which would help the company tap into the mobile photo craze while adding to the 6 billion photos that already get uploaded to the social network every month.